Are Sales > Quality?

[Sovereignty]

So escapist, I'm generally curious about what you think about sales versus quality.

Personally it seems were moving further away from quality. All these formula's to print money (IE Modern Warfare 3!) are creating a nasty little situation where it's probably more profitable to not do something interesting or new.

Does this mean sales mean more now? How long before this bubble bursts?


Lastly, if something breaks sales records a short short shorrrtttt time after it's released... What does that say? That hype sells better then quality?







should eansfig <---- What the hell is this captcha telling me?

 

[Racecarlock]

Well think about it. If you could make a shit ton of money by sticking neon lights or stickers on to bicycles and then reselling them for a high price, or if you could make money by lazily and easily doing anything, wouldn't you? Hell, if you made a bunch cars out of toothpicks and held together at jellybeans but lots of people still bought them and then bought the newer model that just had stickers put on it, wouldn't you make more? Hell, if you put stickers on Popsicle sticks and discovered that you could make millions by just adding a second sticker and calling it a sequel to the first popsicle stick with a sticker on it, wouldn't you do it? Frankly, this is more the fault of consumer intelligence than it is the fault of the companies. Can you really blame them for making minimally upgraded sequels when the fans basically demand it and hand over lots of money every time they make one? Think about it.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'm sorry but I'm fairly certain that low quality games don't sale. Games that make tons of cash may be not very creative for formulaic but aren't low quality. It takes lots of man hours to amke them and they lots of work goes into them.

 

[ChildofGallifrey]

The real question is what is quality? Is quality what you find good or is quality what the guy down the street finds good? How do we determine when a games sells because of hype or its quality?

Quality is, at the same time, both subjective and objective. If you personally adore something, then it's of good quality to you personally. If the same product is generally highly rated by the powers that be, then it is objectively good quality.

CoD is a good example. Objectively, there's nothing wrong with it. It looks good, it sounds good, and the gameplay is solid. It certainly doesn't do anything remotely new or interesting, but what it does it does well. It is objectively good. Subjectively the opinions waver from "Second Coming of Christ" to "You rape-murdered my guinea pig".

Also, to answer the OPs original question, sales figures in no way equal quality. Are the Twilight books masterpieces of world literature? Subjectivity aside, they're technically crap. They read like they were written by a middle school kid writing down her wet dreams on the cusp of her goth/emo phase, and they've sold millions upon millions of copies each.

 

[JochemDude]

Has very little to do with it.

Marketing > Sales

Quality however is completely subjective, though sometimes mislead or misinformed

 

[TheBookkeeper]

one word

McDonald's!

 

[Phishfood]

Sadly, yes sales are vital.

This is why we aren't getting a sequel to the A-team, but I guarantee someone, somewhere is thinking "Avatar 2". Now, I'm not saying Avatar was a bad film as such, but I can name a ton of films more deserving of a sequel.

Flipping it the other way though - something that does not sell well at all, will not be repeated since there is no money available to repeat it, especially in the case of the smaller indie jobs.

So, yes. Sales rule the world. I agree - it is ...not optimal...but there is literally no other way to work. Movie and Dev studios can not throw money away making a loss just because we want them to.

What does interest me, especially in the case of MW, is how many sales they would lose if they removed the DRM and stopped crippling second hand sales.

 

[adamthecg]

It is probarbly the case that really bad games don't sell well.

However its unfortunately the case that some great games don't sell well either. If a certain games genre is not in vogue at the time of release, then likely as not the game won't do very well.

My example here is Psychonauts - A Tim Schafer game that is AMAZING. Critics gave it 9s and 10s, it won the "2005 game critics best original game award" and Total Gamer called it the best game of all time. However it lost the company 18 million dollars because action platformers with stylized graphics, kid psychics and actual story-lines took a back seat to COD 4, Battlefield 2, F.E.A.R., GTA, And Silent Hunter as the best sellers (do I see a genre pattern? Am I bitter about the rise of FPS? HINT: the answers are the same).

I have Revisited Psychonauts and many games like it over and over again, and there is no substitute for creativity and ingenuity. But the sales bubble has been going on for years and instead of getting Psyhonaugts 2, we get more GTA, more Cod and More battlefield. I Guess sales are more important than quality, hence why I have not bought an fps since golden eye.

 

[TheBookkeeper]

Quantity just proves that something is popular and accessible to the public - nothing more.

Lets face it in real terms games are cheaper to buy now than they have ever been; and I can download the latest releases from steam without even leaving the house.
So accessibility has never been better for the games industry. That has got to make a big difference.

I'm sure if we had this kind of accessibility twenty year ago new Mario and Sonic releases would have done the kind of number seen in the last few day in their sleep.

 

[The Abhorrent]

To a publisher & investor, sales are always going to be the main goal; you don't have to play games to make money off of them. Any additonal quality which doesn't help sales is just extra costs, and are "unnecessary".

That is the truth, at least from their perspective.

There will always be generic cash-cows out there, regardless of medium (summer blockbuster films, enough said). The less effort (and cost) you have to put into a project which is guaranteed to make a profit, the better. Quite often these products will be polished to a bright shine, because refinement is guaranteed to help while innovation might not go over well; not to mention a certain minimum of quality is needed for the product to be acceptable, and that more often than not those easy-money franchises need an initial high-quality (or innovative) product to build the hype off of.

---

Now, this isn't entirely a bad thing; nor is entirely a good thing. It's just a fact of life in any entertainment industry, the easy money-makers will always be around for someone to cash-in on them. The good news is that it means that there's more money flowing into the industry, allowing more games to be made and they'll be improved upon; many innovative games are made possible which otherwise wouldn't, simply because there's more money to throw around and publishers may be more willing to take risk. The bad news is that it also leads to a lot of clones & knock-offs trying to make the easy money, because publishers are going to jump at what they know will work. Unfortunately, the easy-money games are going to get a TON of publicity while the experimental ones won't (though at least it's getting made at all).

So yeah, an odd situation. While all the hype some games get (especially those one don't care to hear about) is annoying, the money they bring in is (at least partially) moving towards games which one may is interested in. You just have to sift through all the generic titles, ignore the hype, and wait patiently for the stuff you want.

Someone is always trying to do something new, and every so often it can become a hit.
There will always be those who want the utmost quality in the things they do.
They're just fewer in number than those who are there to make the money.

Call it a "necessary evil" if you want, but the money flowing into (and coming out of) the industry is generally a good thing. It's not like anyone's forcing you to buy & play the cash-cows if you're not interested in them. If they leave, the stuff you want will still be around... but it will take them longer to make, nor will they have the benefits of high production values which the generic cash-cows can pass along to them.

 

[TheBookkeeper]

It is probarbly the case that really bad games don't sell well.

However its unfortunately the case that some great games don't sell well either. If a certain games genre is not in vogue at the time of release, then likely as not the game won't do very well.

My example here is Psychonauts - A Tim Schafer game that is AMAZING. Critics gave it 9s and 10s, it won the "2005 game critics best original game award" and Total Gamer called it the best game of all time. However it lost the company 18 million dollars because action platformers with stylized graphics, kid psychics and actual story-lines took a back seat to COD 4, Battlefield 2, F.E.A.R., GTA, And Silent Hunter as the best sellers (do I see a genre pattern? Am I bitter about the rise of FPS? HINT: the answers are the same).

I have Revisited Psychonauts and many games like it over and over again, and there is no substitute for creativity and ingenuity. But the sales bubble has been going on for years and instead of getting Psyhonaugts to, we get more GTA, more Cod and More battlefield. I Guess sales are more important than quality, hence why I have not bought an fps since golden eye.

Show me where i can buy or download a copy and I will play it!

The thing that killed Psychonauts stone dead was distribution.

Fact!

Which is a real shame as I loved Full Throttle and always wanted to play it. Never found a copy in my local games store though. Shame!

(Shrug)

 

[adamthecg]

Show me where i can buy or download a copy and I will play it!

here ya go!
http://www.psychonauts.com/
Steam version and app version available for mac or PC

 

[TheBookkeeper]

I guarantee someone, somewhere is thinking "Avatar 2". Now, I'm not saying Avatar was a bad film as such, but I can name a ton of films more deserving of a sequel.

I hate to break it to you, but the last time I checked Avatar 2 & 3 had been green-lighted

Sales are also to blame for that 'new' The Thing, which, from all accounts sounds like John Carpenter's remake minus the suspense of not knowing who The Thing is...

Having said that, Prometheus is sounding quite good

Well at least due to poor ticket sales we won't have a Green Lantern 2&3.

 

[targren]

Show me where i can buy or download a copy and I will play it!

The thing that killed Psychonauts stone dead was distribution.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/psychonauts/

Completely DRM-free, too.

 

[TheBookkeeper]

Show me where i can buy or download a copy and I will play it!

here ya go!
http://www.psychonauts.com/
Steam version and app version available for mac or PC

Woow

Thank you. That's my weekend sorted.

Let the retro gaming begin!

 

[Phishfood]

Show me where i can buy or download a copy and I will play it!

The thing that killed Psychonauts stone dead was distribution.

Fact!

Which is a real shame as I loved Full Throttle and always wanted to play it. Never found a copy in my local games store though. Shame!

(Shrug)

To the steamatorium my friend! That is where I got my copy. Go steam.

I will say - Valve are definately bucking the trend of quantity over quality. Valve games just ooze attention and love. Course, the less said about hat fortress 2 the better.

I would say Bethesda are another, I mean barring flying mammoths and AI rating somewhere between rock and slime mold they make some pretty damn fine games.

On the other side of the coin, CoD is a perfect example of a greedy (and sadly sucessful) cash grab. I bought MW, then MW2. Now I'm all CoD'd out. Why are people being suckered into buying the same game over and over and over?

 

[Wolfram23]

Business perspective: Sales>Quality
Consumer perspective: Quality>Sales

In truth though, the two are rarely related. I mean, ok, they are related but just not as much as other factors like being part of a popular brand. Just look at Twilight.

The thing that sucks, though, is that you don't pay less for lower quality like you do with most other things (cars, appliances, furniture, etc). You pay the same $50-$60 for just about any game these days no matter it's size, quality, length, voice acting, etc.

 

[TheBookkeeper]

Yes but the great thing about TF2 is that it's free.

How much more accessible can you get! A great game that everyone with a steam account can play for free.

I've also got a huge amount of respect for Valve for putting their creative bods on great side projects.
I can't believe they came up with portal with some down time between two major title developments.

Madness. Good but utterly mad!
I don't think any other developer could make the games that Valve does!

 

[Strain42]

No, I don't think it does. Because if Sales was equal to Quality, then it wouldn't apply to just games.

And by that logic Avatar would be the greatest movie ever made, simply because it made the most money.

People can try to deny it all they want, but hype is what creates sales.

Anyone who says "I didn't buy this game because of the hype, I bought it because it looked like a good game, and it is." is full of crap. What made it look like a good game? Hype. Advertising. People spent money making the game appealing, whether it's through commercials, gameplay trailers or even the box art. Even something as small as a friend recommending it to you is a form of hype.

Naturally in some cases, something that sells a lot did so because it is good. But it got that way because either a lot of advertising went into it to get people to buy it, or they had a really successful earlier product.

The fact that we've got an avalanche of games with the number 3 in the title this year is proof of that.

 

[Imper1um]

Lets take MW3 for example. A lot of its haters say it sells well because of the hype and the majority of its fans say it sells well because its a good game. So who here is right and who here is wrong?

MW3 is the biggest example of the issue with "iterative friend cycles." See, when someone plays an iterative title that is great, they get used to it, and they generate friends. For example, I used to play CoD1, CoD2, CoD4, and then MW2. I played MW2 because my friends played CoD4. CoD4 was a genuinely great game, with an amazing storyline and pretty great multiplayer (shut up, it worked incredibly well on X360, you PC hackers can keep to yourselves). However, in MW2, it was kind of the same thing...a big letdown. It was also about that time I started examining the titles I was playing (World of Warcraft), and realized I was doing the same fights over and over again.

It was then that I realized that this "iterative friend cycle" exists, and these companies bank on you having it. People buy expansion upon game upon DLC for the same IP because their friends are expected to play it. They look past all the really bad aspects of the game, convincing themselves that they are having fun. The problem is, very little of them add up the pluses and minuses of the titles, and figure out what is really bad about the game, and figure out the minuses are actually more than the pluses, and they should leave.

Such is the case of the Call of Duty series lately. Every single new game has just been a cash in. CoD players are no longer buying the game because of new, interesting storyline, or amazing gameplay- they are purchasing it because their friends will chastise them if they do not, and why would you want to be left on the curb? Personally, I'm hoping that, as people figure out that Activision is just cashing in on the "iterative friend cycle," that less people will buy it next year.

Perhaps, one day, it will sell less than the previous title, and Activision will be forced to come out with a good game that isn't "the next year's iteration."

I'm looking forward to Call of Duty 2014's sales numbers. I hear they are going to add in 4 more guns, and make explosions sometimes BLUE instead of RED! And, popular from CoD2013, they are going to give you the ability to pay to see if you won or lost the last match.